This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
An autonomous vehicle is a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating with little or no user input. An autonomous vehicle senses its environment using sensing devices such as radar, lidar, image sensors such as cameras, and the like. The autonomous vehicle system further uses information from global positioning systems (GPS) technology, navigation systems, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, vehicle-to-infrastructure technology, and/or drive-by-wire systems to navigate the vehicle.
Vehicle automation has been categorized into numerical levels ranging from Zero, corresponding to no automation with full human control, to Five, corresponding to full automation with no human control. Various automated driver-assistance systems, such as cruise control, adaptive cruise control, and parking assistance systems correspond to lower automation levels, while true “driverless” vehicles, which incorporate autonomous driving agents, correspond to higher automation levels.
Driving a vehicle requires a good deal of skill, experience and perception from a human driver. Autonomous driving agents must therefore be trained to be able to match, or even surpass, the driving abilities of humans.
Accordingly, it is desirable to obtain a method of training an autonomous driving agent to make equivalent or improved driving decisions as compared to a human driver. Furthermore, it is desirable to obtain a method of training an autonomous driving agent that is largely unsupervised, and does not require extensive labelling of training data. It is also desirable to recover the reasoning (latent motivations) as to why an autonomous driving agent selected a particular driving action in response to a particular environmental state. Other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.